By 
As a freelance author and publisher, I’m always looking for ways to put my work to good use. Turning my IP into multiple products is a pretty obvious solution. The emerging popularity of Kindles, iPads, and Nooks convinced me that now was the time to turn my print book, Turn Eye Appeal to Buy Appeal, into an eBook.
Many ways to sell and distribute eBooks
I found that there are several routes I could take to sell and distribute my eBooks, depending on how much time and effort I wanted to put into the distribution process. Initially I learned that I could use a third-party aggregator to list my books on popular e-book sales sites, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle department, Apple iBookstore, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook department.
All about aggregators
Third-party aggregators (such as Smashwords, BiblioCore, LuLu, Book Baby, LibreDigital, DarkFire, InGrooves, and many more) help self-publishers convert their books to eBooks and establish distribution with the popular retailers I’ve already mentioned. But aggregators also take a cut (sometimes a significant chunk) of each sale. Some aggregators also use contracts without digital rights management (DRM). DRM protects the copyright of electronic media. DRM, as applied to eBooks, is a proprietary file encryption that helps publishers limit the illegal sale of copyrighted books. This is very important to me, so it was another reason not to use aggregators.
Direct portals to retail sites
Then I found out that there are direct portals to each of these retail sites. I set up my own publisher account with Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google. This allowed me to keep more of my sales by selecting a discount rate of my choosing (discount rate is an amount I agree to give the retailer to sell my book) and keep the middleman (aggregator) out of it.
I completed an online application and contract with each of the retailers and provided information on how they could make payments to my bank account, as well as metadata (information about the book, such as copyright date, book categories, ISBN number, words key, etc.). I then had to convert my book to the proper format they requested and upload the eBook file and cover image.
Here is a table of the most popular eBook formats:
Format / Retailer or Publishing Site / Device
Mobi / Amazon.com (digital text platform) / Kindle
ePub / Apple iBookstore (iTunes Connect) / iPad
ePub/Barnes & Noble (PubIt)/Sony Nook
Google PDF (Google editions)
Many ways to turn a book into an eBook
My print book was originally formatted in Adobe InDesign, and I also had an identical version available as a PDF file format. (I can easily generate an identical version of my book in print as a PDF via Adobe InDesign or Distiller.) But these sites didn’t want a PDF file. They wanted Mobi or ePub format.
My book had two columns and had over 200 illustrations and graphics throughout the interior, so it was quite an intricate layout. I found that complex interior formats don’t easily translate to eBook pages.
Although InDesign has a feature that allows me to convert a document to epub, and I’ve seen websites (including Amazon’s) claiming it’s easy and cheap to translate a file, they just didn’t result in a clean format. First of all, eBook readers are designed to support one long continuous column, so I had to make some major adjustments to my 2-column layout. Proper design was particularly important to me as my book was all about design, design and marketing! However, websites and automated conversion software convert very simple Word documents with pretty good results.
So I searched for the experts in this area; people and companies that specialize in eBook conversion services. Since my book had such a complex design, the price was quite high. I also got a price from a company abroad. I quickly learned that you get what you pay for. As in any field of service, the price of the service is often matched by the quality you receive.
service abroad
I paid a very low price for the eBook conversion service, but I had to spend many hours correcting design and formatting errors and checking all the links. Headings, subheadings, lists, body text, and graphics were not formatted uniformly or in a standard book format. Indents and justified formatting were applied to headings and subheadings when they should not have been. Links were dead or going to the wrong places, title text was clipped, graphics were missing or in the wrong places, and so on. Finally, after several months of working with the contractor on the mobi and epub versions of my eBooks, the files were formatted correctly and I was able to upload them to retail sites.
A few things to keep in mind:
* Make sure you have an active table of contents with active links going to the correct sections within your book.
* Make sure your epub document passes the epub validation test (a free test is available at threepress.org)
* Make sure your ebook has its own ISBN number (you can buy a block of 10 ISBN numbers at Bowker.com). Amazon will assign its own unique identifier to your book, but Apple requires an ISBN number.
* Make sure you have an eye-catching cover design with a title that you can clearly read when reduced to the size of a postage stamp.
* Reformat your cover to 600px wide by 800px tall at 300 DPI so it maximizes the entire screen on most eReader devices.
* Check your files on all devices and eBook software readers. If you don’t have a Kindle, Nook, or iPad, find a friend who does. Download Adobe Digital Editions and Kindle for Mac/PC. Look at your book in each one and make sure everything looks and works correctly.
* Put your table of contents first, even before your copyright page.
* Be careful about your decision on digital rights management and how you answer this question about contracts.
* Run the numbers on how to price your book according to the discount rate you pay the distributor/retailer. Sometimes it works better to lower the price to get a higher profit margin. For example, Amazon and Apple will pay up to 70% royalties for a book if it is priced between $2.99 and $9.99. They only pay 35% if the book is priced at $10.00 or more!
New technology and the lack of established standards
As with any new technology, standards need to be set, and eBooks are no exception. There is much debate among developers and publishers regarding a number of issues including whether each eBook format needs a separate ISBN number, standard page order, encoding that provides consistent results across versions on each device and software, uniform image size and resolution requirements for interior and cover graphics, book-like formatting, navigation, whether devices support color images, etc. This is where much of the work was spent; trying to make my book look better on every eReader device out there.
I hope this helps you find your way from print to ebook with less trials and tribulations.